As I tried, for about the
seventeenth time, to make sense of the healthcare
negotiations, I suddenly realized that I wasn't watching a
political debate at all; rather it was one of those
conflicts you read about in other countries that are so hard
to understand from afar - the sort in which militant and/or
religious sects with hard to remember names and
unpronounceable leaders engage in struggles usually reduced
by the press to simple goals such as "power" or
"strengthening their position."

But instead of Shiek
Wahoodie Marzapan or the Terratus Mozaki faction, we have
Max Baucus, Olympia Snow and the Blue Dogs. And it all makes
about as much sense.

That is, until you stop framing it
as a political division and recognize that we are really
dealing with quasi-religious fundamentalists engaged in a
simple turf battle in which the goal is not healthcare or
the lack thereof, but relative standing at the end of the
conflict. In domestic terms, it is much more like a mob
dispute than a traditional political debate. To be sure,
some of the language seems political - talk of a public
option, mandates and so forth - but this is mostly just part
of the Muzak accompanying the mayhem - symbols that help
make the whole thing appear rational.

In fact, politics
is pretty much dead in America and has been for some
time.

Of course, politics has never been just about such
high minded things as goals, ideas and reforms. Such causes
have always had to struggle for air against the forces
described by Walt Whitman as including "the meanest kind of
bawling and blowing office-holders, office-seekers, pimps,
malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house
clerks, contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-train'd to
carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists,
terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of
slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be
Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyers, sponges,
ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers,
monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons,
deaf men, pimpled men, scarr'd inside with vile disease,
gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money
and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine
men, the lousy combings and born freedom-sellers of the
earth."

But - whether promoted out convenience or noble
purpose - such causes did at least exist and everyone argued
about them - albeit often futilely.

For example, here is
one such statement of goals:

"This Republic had its
beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the
protection of certain inalienable political rights -- among
them the right of free speech, free press, free worship,
trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and
seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

"We
have come to a clear realization of the fact, however, that
true individual freedom cannot exist without economic
security and independence. . . People who are hungry, people
who are (and) out of a job are the stuff of which
dictatorships are made.

"In our day these economic truths
have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so
to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of
security and prosperity can be established for all --
regardless of station, or race or creed.

"Among these
are: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the
industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The
right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing
and recreation; . . . The right of every business man, large
and small , to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair
competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home; The right to
adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and
enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the
economic fears of old age, and sickness, and accident and
unemployment; And finally, the right to a good education.

"America's own rightful place in the world depends in
large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been
carried into practice for all our citizens."

Now, if you
were to clip the foregoing and wander around the White House
and Capitol Hill looking for someone to advocate such a
program, you would be lucky if you came up with anyone other
than, say, Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders and perhaps a bare
majority of the Black Caucus. . . .

The others - from the
president on down - would regard such a program as naive
claptrap not even worthy of discussion. And not a single
mainstream reporter or TV show would give it the slightest
attention.

Which will give you some sense of what has
happened in the 65 years since these words were broadcast
nationally during a fireside chat by Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.

We like to think of ourselves as so much more
sophisticated than those crazy Muslims with their
innumerable and indecipherable sects, yet that is precisely
what our politics has become as well.

It is not about
great issues but about minor factions. It is not about
causes to be advocated but subcultures to be preserved. It
is not about mass politics but about atomized preferences.
And, of course, it is no longer about votes because they
have become almost superfluous - symbolic reflections of the
dollars that really matter.

If we toss out our traditional
political paradigm and start to look at America as if it
were one of those countries we like to occupy, destabilize
or develop an exit strategy for, it all begins to make more
sense.

We find ourselves in a country in which at least
three major fundamentalist mujahideens are struggling for
power: the conservative, liberal and establishment. Each
share such characteristics as absolute confidence in their
righteousness, absolute certainty in their beliefs, absolute
contempt for doubt, reduction of their opponents to the
status of devils, and the acceptance of warfare as a noble
exercise as long as they get to pick the target.

In a
healthy democracy, two or more parties propose specific
programs to better, in their view, the state of the nation.
But not one of the contemporary American mujahideens has
shown any serious interest in such matters for the past
several decades. It has been left to minor sects like the
Greens and Libertarians to still worry about issues.

Conservatives, for example, have seemingly forgotten
their erstwhile concern for small government and lower
spending and have chosen to define themselves instead by
what they oppose: primarily abortion and gay marriage. There
are about 1.2 million abortions a year and about 150,000 gay
marriages or similar unions. In other words, conservatives
have established as a primary goal changing the annual
behavior of less than one half of one percent of the
American public.

About the only major policies that
establishment fundamentalists have pursued during this same
period has been to find new ways to transfer wealth from the
many to the few and to periodically change the identity of
their major enemy - i.e. the devil incarnate - and thus
periodically redefine themselves. Over these three decades
the devil has been serially located in El Salvador, Libya,
Lebanon, Grenada, Honduras, Iraq, Panama, Bosnia, and
Afghanistan. And the most deadly horned beast of all has
been the one selling drugs, the war on which having cost
more American lives than any conflict since Vietnam.

But
the only clear victory in all of this was in Grenada and, as
Ted Turner recently noted, the last country to actually
surrender to us was Japan. Yet not one significant member of
the establishment mujahideen has apologized for the futility
and cost of their warrior fantasies and, as of this morning,
not one leader of the establishment has apologized for their
near disastrous financial policies and misdeeds from which
we are now desperately attempting to recover.

But then,
the enemy was never there to be defeated but as a constant
threat enforcing the loyalty of one's constituency. As
Ernest Becker put it, "war is a sociological safety valve
that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes
into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies."
With it you need no progress, no policies, and no change in
the system at all.

All you need is an enemy, with the
greatest threat not being the enemy itself but that it might
disappear. Constatine Cavafy put it well a century
ago:

Night is here but the barbarians have not
come.And some people arrived from the borders, And
said that there are no longer any barbarians.And now
what shall become of us without any barbarians?Those
people were some kind of solution.

Few in public
office have said it so bluntly, a remarkable exception being
the State Department's director of policy planning in 1948,
George Kennan, who argued, "We should cease to talk about
vague and. . . unreal objectives such as human rights, the
raising of the living standards, and democratization. . . We
are going to have to deal in straight power
concepts."

While an establishment or conservative movement
obsessed with power certainly has plenty of precedents in
history, this tendency was mitigated in the United States
during its first two centuries because, for better or worse,
Americans of all stripes believed in things and their
politics reflected this.

But what is rare enough to be
deeply disturbing has been the transformation of the
American liberal constituency into a similar sect - one
searching for power without the necessity of purpose.
Certainly since its cynical acceptance of Bill Clinton,
mainstream liberal Democratic politics has not displayed
more than a passing interest in any major policy - sharing
with the right a reliance on things like gay marriage and
abortion while ignoring massive economic, environmental and
civil liberties issues. To be sure, there are progressives
and groups that have tried to take up the slack, but they
have been uniformly ignored, or even dissed, such as the
refusal to invite single payer advocates to White House
discussions on health care, which mainstream liberals barely
noticed.

Further, liberals have increasingly taken to
acting like conservatives. They are defining themselves by
their enemies rather than by their own beliefs and programs.
For example, their obsession with the faults of Fox News
argues that true virtue lies in not being Sean Hannity.
There was a time when liberals had higher standards than
that.

Worse, the liberal paradigm has assigned to much of
America the sins of Rush Limbaugh, condemning the very
people who should be converted, disparaging much of our land
as mere "fly over country," and showing no respect for the
problems of those who live in such places. These are the
characteristics of a snotty private club, not a political
movement.

There are a couple of reasons why all this is
deeply disturbing. The first is that almost without
exception, the best political ideas - from democracy itself
to a minimum wage or ecological preservation - have come
from the left. For liberalism to go into sleep mode or
retreat into a cocoon of smug self identity endangers the
whole nation.

The second is that one of the hidden
dangers of politics without purpose is that it becomes
increasingly corrupt and supportive of aggressively
narcissistic and anti-democratic abuse. This is what
happened in Nazi Germany as the disintegration of liberalism
became an important part of the cultural rubble upon which
Hitler climbed.

There is nothing, however, that prevents
the rediscovery of real politics in America. Admittedly, it
would be difficult given the almost total bias of the media
towards the personality rather than the substance of power.
But there could still be a progressive populist movement
that would promote a real economic reform movement, defend
the weak against the powerful, the local against the
centralized and rediscover the sort of rights of which
Roosevelt spoke 65 years ago.

Since the media is a key
part of the establishment mujahideen, it will not
voluntarily admit this to its viewers and readers, but we
are living in a nation of increasingly angry, restless,
confused folk and if they are not offered decent and
realistic answers they will become increasingly susceptible
to the worst kind of lies.

Yet for it to happen, we must
first accept the degree to which the system we were taught
we lived under simply no longer exists. That our politics
have lost honor and soul, with conscious programs and
polices replaced by the transactions of mobs, exemplified by
healthcare negotiations in which the major winners will
inevitably be the healthcare industry and the biggest losers
those in whose name a final measure will be passed.

And
we must also view that part of unempowered America with
which we find disagreement not as irreparable rightwing
junkies but as fellow citizens who have been deceived,
misled and screwed. And then, issue by issue, turn them into
allies as together we rediscover what politics was meant to
be - and still can be - about.

PENSIONS: THE NEXT CASUALTY OF WALL STREET
Mark Brenner, Counterpunch -
Nobody wants to admit it, but the next casualty of the Wall
Street meltdown will probably be your golden years. For
years corporations have been trying to choke the life out of
traditional pensions, working hard to get out from under the
risk-and the cost-of providing for their retirees. Between
last year's credit crunch and changes to federal pension
laws, they may get their wish.

Nearly $4 trillion worth of
retirement savings were wiped out in the first weeks of the
2008 financial freefall. Half of the drop was concentrated
in traditional pension plans, also known as defined-benefit
plans. While most workers in these plans haven't had their
monthly benefits cut, unlike the 46 million people riding
the stock market with 401(k) defined-contribution plans, the
storm clouds are gathering.

Even before the financial
crisis, traditional pensions were a vanishing breed. Thirty
years ago more than a third of the private sector workforce
had traditional pensions. Last year that number was down to
16 percent.

Driving the decline were employers looking to
get off cheap, eliminating pensions entirely when they could
get away with it, and when they couldn't, shifting to
401(k)s. These programs were legalized in 1978 and were
originally designed to supplement traditional pensions. Now
they're choking them out like kudzu.

Corporations got a
great deal, paying about half what they used to towards
their workers' retirement by the '90s. Even more
important-as anyone who has opened their 401(k) statement
recently can attest-the move shifted risk off companies and
onto us.

Traditional pensions were a collective solution
to a collective problem. Young and old contributing together
smoothed out insecurity for all. Now it's just you and the
stock market-with far less in your pocket.

Even before the
crash, studies showed that 401(k)s leave workers with 10 to
33 percent of what traditional pensions provide. Given the
30-year squeeze on wages, most people haven't saved much
either, which explains why more than half of all 401(k)
participants have less than $75,000 when they retire.

TODAY'S LESSON FROM GOLDMAN SACHS
Guardian, UK - One of the City's
leading figures has suggested that inequality created by
bankers' huge salaries is a price worth paying for greater
prosperity. In remarks that will fuel the row around
excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman
Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret
Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding
their staff.

Speaking to an audience at St Paul's
Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last
night, Griffiths said the British public should "tolerate
the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for
all".. . .

PENTAGON PAYS $400 A GALLON TO FUEL AF-PAK
WAR The Hill - The Pentagon pays
an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat
vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan. The statistic is likely
to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost
of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

Pentagon
officials have told the House Appropriations Defense
Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400
by the time it arrives in the remote locations in
Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate. . .

A landlocked
country, Afghanistan has no seaports and a shortage of
airports and navigable roads. The nearest port is in
Karachi, Pakistan, where fuel for U.S. troops is
shipped.

NY Times - Gail Collins's "When
Everything Changed" points out what the women on "Mad Men"
know: that period in our history was less enjoyable for the
ladies. Ms. Collins, who edited the editorial page of The
New York Times (the first woman to have held that position)
from 2001 to 2007 and who now writes an Op-Ed column for the
paper, begins her informative survey with a panoramic look
at how women lived in 1960 - recent history, we might think,
until we note how many practices then in fashion seem, by
current standards, positively medieval.

Female passengers
were banned from United Airlines' "executive flights" from
New York to Chicago, and in some states women were barred
from jury duty lest time spent in the courtroom "encourage
lax performance of their domestic duties." "Hell, yes, we
have a quota," admitted a medical school dean. "We do keep
women out, when we can."

The practice of paying women
less for doing the same jobs as men was not only accepted
but routine; a wife's credit card was issued in her
husband's name; and women had trouble securing bank loans to
buy a house or even a car. The National Press Club was off
limits to women until 1971. No one much questioned these
regulations and customs - the dress codes requiring women to
wear skirts instead of pants, the firing of airline
stewardesses who gained too much weight - nor was there
vocal opposition to the sort of prohibitions that we decry
when they appear in dispatches from some benighted emirate
or sheikdom.

Sam Smith, Multitudes - [Harvard dean F
Skiddy Von Stade's] attitude toward social change - as
recalled in the Harvard Crimson in 1974 : "When I see the
bright, well-educated, but relatively dull housewives who
attended the Seven Sisters, I honestly shudder at the
thought of changing the balance of males versus females at
Harvard. Quite simply, I do not see highly educated women
making startling strides in contributing to our society in
the foreseeable future. They are not, in my opinion, going
to stop getting married and/or having children. They will
fail in their present role as women if they do."

Von
Stade had plenty of support for such views. Professor John
Finley, classics scholar and master of Eliot House, said
about the same time that "I'm not quite sure people want to
have crystalline laughter falling like waterfalls down each
entry way of the house at all hours. I should think it would
be a little disturbing if you were taking advanced organic
chemistry.". . .

Thirty years after she graduated in
1962, New York politician Elizabeth Holtzman would say,
"Nobody protested. We didn't know yet what was unfair. I
felt privileged to be getting a Harvard education." A New
York Times article the year of her graduation said that
"Radcliffe girls," like those from other women's colleges,
"don't DO much of anything beyond marrying and raising
children." The article was written by a Harvard man. And in
another NY Times piece, Peggy Schmertzler of the Radcliffe
class of 1953 recalled, "I remember the deans' telling us an
educated person made the best mother. . . She could sing
French songs to her children."

On the other hand, many of
the Cliffies held their own. One of the stories told was of
the professor chiding a woman student for knitting in class.
"Knitting," he said, "is a repressed form of masturbation."
Replied the student, "When I knit, I knit. When I
masturbate, I masturbate."

PAKISTANI SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES TO BE CLOSED
Anti-War - At least six people
were killed and 42 others wounded in a pair of suicide
bombings at the International Islamic University in the
Pakistani capital of Islamabad, the latest in a rising
string of attacks across the nation in the past several
weeks.

The latest attack took the nation by shock, leading
the government to quickly announce that it was shutting down
every school and college across the entire nation. All
public and private education in the nation will hence be
shuttered until further notice.

This is a major change
from the assorted military offensives across the last
several years, where the conflict was largely restricted to
a small region, and even when an attack did occur, it left
most of the nation untouched.

Not so this time, as every
student across the country will wake up tomorrow realizing
that the war is having a direct impact on their life.

HEROIN FOR HEROIN ADDICTS PROGRAM IS WORKING
CNN - A newly released British
study found that daily heroin injections given to
hard-to-treat addicts as part of a comprehensive program
succeeded in treating those addicts and reducing crime. The
use of street heroin was reduced by three quarters and the
crimes committed trying to get drugs were cut by two-thirds,
the study found.

"The intensity of the program is quite
striking," said John Strang, who led the research team at
Britain's National Addiction Centre, associated with King's
College in London. "The bond that is formed and the
commitment that's established between the patient coming in
for treatment and the staff is far greater than you would
ever ordinarily see."

Taking heroin off the streets seems
to be making a difference. Researchers injected heroin in a
safe, stable environment at medically supervised clinics.
They crucially paired that with intensive counseling and
addiction treatment.

The researchers reported that
benefits were evident just six weeks into treatment among
users who had failed at other kinds of treatment.

One of
those participants was "Sarah," who said that after coping
with her addiction for more than 20 years, she lost hope
that anything would work.

Sarah described how the program
had an almost immediate affect on her life. She said she was
able to keep a schedule, stop buying drugs on the street and
gain an appreciation of what her life could be like if she
wasn't so consumed by getting high.

"You'll always be an
addict basically; it's about managing it and leading a
positive life" said Sarah, adding, "It quickly became, well,
I actually do want to stop. I don't really want to have to
stick needles in me all my life."

Her biggest fear now is
that the program will be cut or shut down if the government
deems it too controversial.

Another patient, who asked to
be identified as "Emma," said, "The morality of it was taken
out of the question. I wasn't being condemned for it and at
last I could start taking responsibility in a rational
way."

Emma described being chaotic, confused, emaciated
and always dreaming about her next fix. By contrast, she
said, the program made her feel cared for, supported and,
above all, confident that she could kick the heroin
habit.

FLOTSAM & JETSAM: RUTH &
SAMMIE ABBOTT Sam Smith: Ruth Abbott,
who passed recently, was half of one of America's most
remarkable couples. For starters, she met her future husband
in 1937 while he was in jail. She told the Montgomery County
Gazette, "He and my father were arrested for picketing in
New York. They were both sentenced to 30 days in the Erie
County Jail." Added the paper: "Ruth said she went to the
jail to visit her father and would also visit Abbott because
her father told her that he didn't have many visitors."

I
met and worked with the couple when Sammie was running the
remarkably successful battle against freeways in the
nation's capital - a fight that kept DC from becoming
another Los Angeles. The experience would help form my view
of politics, permanently alienating me, for example, from
the liberal bias that you could only work with those who
shared most of your values. After all, the anti-freeway
movement thrived on its variety, symbolized by the day that
there were two speakers at a rally: Grosvenor Chapman,
president of the All white Georgetown Citizens Association,
and Reginald Booker, the black activist head of Niggers Inc.
I remember looking up on the stage at the remarkable pair
and thinking, "We've won." And we
had.

Sammie Abbott & Reginald Booker
Evening Star photoMeredith Hooker,
Montgomery County Gazette, 2002 - Interstate 95 could have
split the City of Takoma Park when the road was proposed
during the 1960s. But Sammie Abbott wouldn't let it
happen.

The late Takoma Park mayor led the fight against
the proposed freeway that would have destroyed homes in both
Takoma Park and Washington, D.C., including his own. During
the battle, Abbott created the slogan "No White Men's Roads
Through Black Men's Homes.". . .

Abbott became mayor at
age 72 in 1980 and served until 1986. When he first ran for
mayor, he lost by eight votes in 1978. He lost by seven
votes during his final mayoral race in 1986.

During
Abbott's six-year tenure, speed humps and four-way stops
were put in the city to slow traffic. Abbott created the
city newsletter. Takoma Park became "Tree City, USA" and a
nuclear-free zone. The city also became a sanctuary for
refugees escaping the brutality of right-wing regimes in
Central America. "He was very, very busy," Ruth Abbott said.
. .

Aldrighetti said in the days Abbott served on the
council, "democracy reigned" and caused council meetings to
go until 3 a.m. Often, he said, the meetings began in the
council chambers and ended at the Tastee Diner in Silver
Spring when people became tired and hungry. .

Ruth Abbott
said Sam was arrested almost 50 times for protesting various
things over the course of his life. "He went from one big
issue to the next," she said.

Abbott, a graphic artist and
union organizer, would tell you he printed more anti-war
flyers than any other artist in America did, Aldrighetti
said. Although Abbott was a fighter pilot in World War II,
Abbott opposed the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Aldrighetti
said.. . .

Leventhal said Abbott was an advocate for
affordable housing and tenants' rights and helped the city
to implement rent control, which is still in place today. He
said one of Abbott's biggest goals was to create affordable
housing for everyone.

When Montgomery College was planning
to expand and take down homes on Takoma Avenue, Abbott sat
in front of a bulldozer to stop the construction,
Aldrighetti said. . .

Sam Smith, 1990 - By the middle of
the sixties I was fast approaching the age of thirty which
-- according to contemporary mythology -- was about to
render me totally untrustworthy. Having only recently signed
up for social change, I found the prospect of such early
forced retirement from righteousness rather annoying and
depressing.

Then I noticed a curious thing. In the peace,
civil rights and anti-freeway movements some of the people
who were making the most sense -- and the most difference --
were far older than I. People like David and Selma Rein,
Julius Hobson and Sammie Abbott.

As a product of the
fifties in which cynicism and disengagement were the highest
forms of political activity, I found myself often unable to
identify with the Aquarian optimism of those just a few
years younger than myself. Aquarius was not an age, I
thought, but only brief happy fireworks in the long night
before human understanding. I came to believe that Bobby
Seale's appeal to "seize the time" best summarized the
transitory nature of the success that social and political
change were then enjoying. In a literal sense, narrow in
focus, I was not off the mark. But because I came to know a
few people like Sammie Abbott -- it came not to
matter.

Sammie had, I found out, been a union organizer
before I had even been born. He had been protesting against
the bomb while I was still in elementary school. He had been
black-listed while I was in high school. That he had
remained so committed, creative and indefatigable for so
long was a truly remarkable discovery. That he had done so
during times not only without the support of mass
demonstrations, mass media and the cheers of a whole
generation, but in times when such activities were
considered akin to treason was inspiring. Above all, the
constancy of it, the steadfastness made me comprehend for
the first time the existential concept of personal witness
to the truth that had eluded me during my years of Quaker
education.

Of course I could not have described Sammie's
effect on me so succinctly back then. Nor, I regret, did I
ever mention it to him. There was about Sammie the
compelling aura of a job to be done as soon as possible and
the day to sit back and reflect on it all never came. In
fact, I wonder what Sammie would have said about his
memorial service, at which hundreds of activists gathered
for two and a half hours of eulogy, music and anecdotes.
Looking at the energy, talent and faith in the room, I
suspect he might have been annoyed that at a time so hostage
to a president's puerile apocalyptic vision we were wasting
the afternoon mere memories with so much to be done.

I
would not have been surprised if he had arisen in mist from
the middle of the room and in that voice and with that
pointing finger so reminiscent of an old testament prophet
interrupted our proceedings and demanded that we get back to
business.

I remember that voice and that finger pointing
at Thomas Airis, director of highways, or Gilbert Hahn,
chair of the city council. Through that voice flowed the
aggregated anger of a city abused, of justice ignored, of
dreams deferred.

But I also remember that the anger was
only the beginning. Always there was a plan, an idea, a way
of doing it. Drive down U Street, through Brookland or up
the Potomac River by the islands of the Three Sisters and
you will find no freeway there, in part because Sammie knew
how to move from anger to productive action.

Like the time
someone discovered an internal DC government map showing a
proposed freeway right through the heart of Shaw. Sammie
immediately sat down and created a 3 by 4 foot poster with a
blow-up of the section in question, the freeway overlaid in
red identifying exactly which buildings -- such as Pride
Headquarters and the Howard Theatre -- would be torn down.
The headline: White Men's Roads Through Black Men's Homes.
The posters were tacked up all over Shaw and within a few
days the DC government was disingenuously denying it had
even thought of a freeway there. It may have been the first
and only freeway stopped after less than a month of
protest.

Sammie built his entire life around truth and
justice. A cause was not a career move, not on option
purchased on a political future, nor a flirtation of
conscience. It was simply the just life's work of a just
human. Long after others his age were enjoying retirement,
he served as mayor of what became known the People's
Republic of Takoma Park because of the progressive policies
pressed by Sammie and his supporters. . .

I think what
Sammie Abbot was all about was attending to what Jefferson
called the revival and expansion of our rights before they
expire in a convulsion. There is no more noble activity in
which he could have spent his life and few who have done it
with more consistency, imagination, courage and love of
justice.

KARZAI: THE STORY THE MEDIA
DOESN'T TELL YOU Wayne Madsen, 2002 -
According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government
sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of
Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo,
California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating
with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas)
pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to
Pakistan. Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun
Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought
the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the
CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William
Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter
Service Intelligence Service interlocutors.

Later, Karzai
and a number of his brothers moved to the United States
under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the
agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and
their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according
to Middle East and South Asian sources. When one peers
beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon
concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that
construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority
of the Bush administration from the outset. Although UNOCAL
claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998,
the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and
Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was
never off the table.

During the late 1990s, Karzai worked
with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas
project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National
Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special
Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House
press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was
made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on
Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, itself no
innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal . . .
Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron
Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush
campaign. Enron, which recently filed for bankruptcy in the
single biggest corporate collapse in the nation's history,
conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal . . . A
chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been
Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that
also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the
time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney's
selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton
also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney
campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were
Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which
suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow
Enron into bankruptcy court.

Bill Gertz, Geostrategy, 2001
- U.S. officials said Afghanistan's new interim leader,
Hamid Karzai, has a long history of contacts with both the
CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence service,
known as ISI. The connections are said to be the reason
Karzai was the candidate most acceptable to the United
States and Pakistan. Karzai will head the new government
over the next six months. Karzai and several brothers own a
chain of restauraunts in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and
Baltimore. They have residences in Quetta, Islamabad and
Peshawar . . . Karzai met the late CIA Director Bill Casey
when Casey made one of his numerous trips to Pakistan during
the U.S. covert operation to back mujahideen rebels against
the Soviet Union during the 1980s. His ties to ISI are based
on connections to former ISI Director Akhtar Abdur Rahman
Khan and date to the early 1980s. Karzai, a moderate Msulim,
and his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, were befriended by ISI in
the early 1980s.

Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, 2001 - - Last
week's much-ballyhooed Afghan "unity" conference in Germany
produced precisely what this column predicted: a sham
"coalition" government run by the Northern Alliance. One of
the CIA's Pashtun "assets," Hamid Karzai, who represents no
one but himself, was named prime minister. There was no
other real Pashtun representation, though they comprise half
the population . . .

A POLICE CHIEF SPEAKS OF LOVE
Press Herald, ME - Portland Police
Chief James Craig told a group of civic leaders that love
can be an important quality in police work. Craig spoke to
about 100 people gathered for the Institute for Civic
Leadership's Leadership in Action Breakfast Series at the
Mariner's Church. The title of his talk was "What's love got
to do with it? Leadership lessons from the beat."

Craig
described how as a Los Angeles officer he was assigned to
some of that city's most gang-infested neighborhoods. It
became apparent that youth were attracted to gangs because
that's where they found love and security.

Effective
policing meant providing alternatives to young people, he
said. He cited one middle school program where officers ran
a sort of "boot camp" two afternoons a week and on Saturday
mornings for the most challenging students.

The military
approach helped curb the students misbehavior but also led
to relationships with the officers.

"Some of these young
people never heard the word love, especially from an adult
who will look them in the eye," Craig said.

The emotion
doesn't need to be articulated to be felt, he
said.

"Certainly, the gang members when he's trying to get
a new recruit, doesn't say 'I love you' and rarely do you
see a police officer use the word love," he said. "It's
about action. "

"If you are truly passionate and care
about your community, you must love people," he said. "You
can't serve if you don't love."

BAIT AND SWITCH ON 'PUBLIC OPTION' FOOLING
PUBLIC Kip Sullivan, Physicians
for a Public Health Plan - The New York Times reported on
Saturday, October 17, that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is warning
his constituents that the "public option" is not going to be
available to the great majority of Americans. No one who has
actually read the Senate health committee's "reform" bill or
the House "reform" bill disputes this. According to the
Congressional Budget Office, the "option" will be available
only to about 30 million people, or about one American in
ten. As the Times put it (slightly inaccurately), the
"option" in the Democrats' legislation "would be out of
bounds to the approximately 160 million people already
covered through employers."

Does the public understand
this? According to Wyden, they don't. Wyden says his
constituents are shocked when they are told the "option"
will not be available to the vast majority of Americans.
When he began informing his constituents about this truth
last summer, "They nearly fell out of the bleachers," he
said . . .

I have written several papers warning the
public that they have been the object of a "bait and switch"
campaign by the leadership of the "option" movement. The
"bait" in this campaign was the original version of the
"option" promoted by Jacob Hacker. This version would have
created an enormous public program that would have insured
half the non-elderly population. Among several provisions of
this first version of the "option" that would have ensured
large size was one that said the "option" had to be
available to all non-elderly Americans. The "switch"
occurred when Democrats on the Senate Health, Education,
Labor and Pensions Committee and three chairmen of House
committees drafted legislation that would create a very
small and weak "option." . . .

After reading Wyden's
warning, I examined over 50 polls to see if any pollsters
had bothered to investigate the issue Wyden is raising. . .
I discovered that the nation's best known polling firms have
allowed themselves to be fooled. Pollsters are asking the
public the wrong question. They are asking the public to
comment on Hacker's original version of the "option" (the
"bait"), not the actual "option" proposed in the Senate HELP
Committee bill and HR 3200. Not surprisingly, the polls tell
us very little about whether the public thinks the "option"
will be available to everyone or to just a small minority. .
.

BANKS JUST WALKING AWAY FROM
FORECLOSED PROPERTY Dayton Daily News - As if the mortgage
foreclosure crisis wasn't bad enough, sometime last year a
new phenomenon began to emerge: Experts say mortgage lenders
and banks began walking away from foreclosed properties,
especially in urban areas.

The so-called "walkaways" can
occur along several different paths, but the effect is the
same - after threatening or getting foreclosure, the lender
attempts to abandon the usually vacant property, leaving the
original owner, the neighbors and the city to live with the
damage.

Owners often accumulate taxes and zoning
enforcement fines on property they believe they no longer
own.

Neighbors watch their property values decline as the
vacant property deteriorates and is often broken into and
stripped.

Cities then have to bear the cost of boarding
up a structure, maintaining the lawn and, eventually,
demolishing it.

Dayton housing inspector John Carter did
a study last year of 302 vacant and abandoned residences in
the city and found that about 70 percent were bank
walkaways. Of those walkaways, he said, about 20 percent had
mortgages but no foreclosure was ever filed.

"There are
several tragedies to it," said Richard Stock, director of
the University of Dayton's Business Research Group. "The
very first tragedy is, my God, these people could have
continued to be in their house all this time, maintaining
it. And then there's the impact on the community." . . .

Dayton Daily News - Nobody is sure
exactly how many bank walkaways are occurring. For various
reasons, they can't be identified in searches of public real
estate and court data without individually pulling case
files, experts say. . .

David Rothstein, a researcher
with Policy Matters Ohio, summarized the way they occur like
this:

- The lender files a foreclosure, gets the
foreclosure judgment in court, takes the property to
sheriff's auction but doesn't bid on it if no one else does.

- The lender files as above, gets the judgment, sets the
sheriff's auction, then cancels the sale at the last minute.

- The lender files as above but then never requests a
sheriff's auction.

- The lender doesn't even bother to
file foreclosure.

All of these actions leave the
foreclosed property in the hands of the original owner who,
in many cases, has moved out and is unaware the lender
hasn't taken it. . .

BIG PHARMA RIPS OFF HEALTHCARE PLAN
James Ridgeway, Unsilent
Generation - Big Pharma was the real winner in last week's
shouting match between Obama and the insurance industry.
Insurance execs took all the heat for attacking the White
House's health care reform plan after the administration and
lawmakers had negotiated for months to craft a proposal that
the industry could live with. Meanwhile, Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America, the main industry
umbrella group, got to play the good guy-all the while
escaping scrutiny for the fact that in recent months it has
been quietly jacking up drug prices.

Of course, Big
Pharma already stands to hit the jackpot from Obama's
proposed reform plan. Under the deft direction of its chief
lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, PhRMA
had already secured a valuable deal from the White House to
provide a $80 billion in cost savings over the next 10 years
in return for the President's promise to oppose controls on
drug pricing and importation of drugs from abroad.

The top 10 prescription
drugs in America do around $40 billion per year in sales. It
is estimated that 30 to 40 million Americans- lack
insurance, or about 20 percent of the population. These 30
to 40 million new 'customers' will have greater access to
doctors and prescriptions. -this could add another 20
percent to sales of just the top 10 drugs alone. Twenty
percent of $40 billion is-bingo-$8 billion per year. And
remember that only factors in the top 10 drugs. There are
hundreds more in the market. It is clear that $8 billion in
cost cuts will be made up in multiples over the years.

But
just in case someone throws a wrench into the deal, Big
Pharma has been hedging its bets by quietly running up drug
prices this year. The Pharmalot blog reports:

During this
year's third quarter, eight of the biggest drug makers
introduced hefty price increases of an average 8.7
percent-easily outdistancing the core Consumer Price Index
of 1.4 percent, according to a recent research report by
Credit Suisse analyst Catherine Arnold. . .

Of course,
the White House could back out of its arrangement. But as
the Senate Finance Committee moved the legislation last
week, the deal seemed to be holding together just fine.
Newsweek's Howard Fineman explains how two attempts to ramp
up funds from the drug industry were beaten-not by
Republicans, but by Democrats:

"The Senate Finance
Committee's bill, which passed out of committee on Tuesday,
leans very hard on Medicare-but treads very lightly on the
private sector. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat from
senior-dominated Florida, apparently had not gotten the memo
about leaving Big Pharma alone. He wanted to offer two
amendments, each of which would have taken another
$100-billion-plus bite out of the industry's Medicare
revenue. Tauzin was not pleased. Neither was the White
House. The senator was talked out of offering one amendment.
He narrowly lost on the other after [Jim] Messina, the White
House aide, called to express his dismay and to remind
everyone that a deal was a deal. Democrats celebrated the
outcome as a victory. The only losers were the American
people. But, hey, they weren't at the table."

FURTHERMORE. . .
Raw Story - Insurgents in Afghanistan
are using heroin as a tactical weapon against US forces,
hoping to emulate the drug problems that plagued US troops
in Vietnam and Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s,
says a new investigative report. At the Daily Beast, author
Gerald Posner cites "an internal US intelligence report"
that "concluded [insurgents] are targeting American troops
in an effort to undermine their effectiveness, while raising
cash to pay for new recruits and weaponry." The report
brings up inevitable comparisons to the Vietnam War of the
1960s and 1970s and the Soviet war in Afghanistan that ended
two decades ago. It also raises the possibility that the
conflict in Afghanistan will spill over into the streets of
America as returning troops bring their addictions home with
them. . . "In Vietnam we ended up with a nearly 20 percent
addiction rate to China White," Posner said. (A 1971 report
on drug addiction among US soldiers in Vietnam pegged the
number closer to 15 percent.) "Soviet soldiers came back
from Afghanistan with addictions," Posner continued, noting
that Russia is now the world's largest per-capita user of
heroin "as a result of those returning Soviet fighters."

Reuters - Japan's swimmers could face
lifetime bans if they dye their hair, wear an earring or
have brightly decorated fingernails. Japanese officials have
launched a strict policy to prevent athletes turning up for
competitions looking more like rock stars than swimmers.
Male and female swimmers caught sneaking into each others
rooms at Japanese training camp, where the sexes have
separate sleeping quarters, will also find themselves in hot
water. . . Rule-breakers face being booted out of the team
and sent home in disgrace, a suspension of up to five years
or even a lifetime ban.

Pam Martens, Counterpunch - The
financial tsunami unleashed by Wall Street's esurient
alchemy of spinning toxic home mortgages into triple-A
bonds, a process known as securitization, has set off its
second round of financial tremors. . . Three plain talking
judges, in state courts in Massachusetts and Kansas, and a
Federal Court in Ohio, have drilled down to the "straw man"
aspect of securitization. The judges' decisions have raised
serious questions as to the legality of hundreds of
thousands of foreclosures that have transpired as well as
the legal standing of the subsequent purchasers of those
homes, who are more and more frequently the Wall Street
banks themselves. Adding to the chaos, the Financial
Accounting Standards Board has made rule changes that will
force hundreds of billions of dollars of these
securitizations back onto the Wall Street banks balance
sheets, necessitating the need to raise capital just as the
unseemly courtroom dramas are playing out.

Denver Channel - Rocky Mountain Health
Plans said it will no longer consider obesity a
"pre-existing condition" barring coverage for hefty infants.
The change comes after the insurer turned down a Grand
Junction 4-month-old who weighs about 17 pounds. . . The
company attributed the boy's rejection for health coverage
to a "flaw in our underwriting system."

Note to DC
readers - Your editor will be among those featured in a
WETA-TV documentary on Washington in the 1960s that airs
November 2 at 9 pm. Gives a real sense of the town in that
era.

NY Times - The basic Medicare premium
will shoot up next year by 15 percent, to $110.50 a month. .
. The increase means that monthly premiums would top $100
for the first time, a stark indication of the rise in
medical costs . . . About 12 million people, or 27 percent
of Medicare beneficiaries, will have to pay higher premiums
or have the additional amounts paid on their behalf. The
other 73 percent will be shielded from the increase because,
under federal law, their Medicare premiums cannot go up more
than the increase in their Social Security benefits, and
Social Security officials announced last week that there
would be no increase in benefits in 2010 because inflation
had been extremely low.

Twenty-six percent of U.S. adults
report that at least one member of their immediate family
lost their health insurance coverage within the past year, a
new Zogby Interactive poll shows. Somewhat more likely to
have lost coverage are those in households earning $35,000
and less (37%) and those 18-29 years old (35%).

Tree
Hugger - Looking at the wide sweep of US fish and
wildlife management history, the fact that 'hook and bullet'
groups have expressed support for climate action should be
viewed as a return to the historical norm. And no wonder. As
a Reuters article points out, it's hard to live in denial if
you "spend a lot of time outdoors and notice changes like
shifting bird migrations or earlier spring run-offs in
rivers from melting snow." The mythical view of all
political conservatives as 'anti-conservation' arose from
political campaign consultants stoking fear over the
prospect of of over-reaching gun and ammunition controls,
for example. . . City-dwelling "tree huggers" have more in
common with the rural 'hook and bullet crowd' than they
might care to admit. And vice versa.

Cathy Wilcox, Sidney Morning Herald,
Australia - The shaken Anglican Archbishop of Sydney
admits he has wondered whether God had decided to punish his
diocese. eter Jensen confessed to being grief-stricken by
the size of the diocese's $160 million financial loss and
called on his faithful not be panicked or paralyzed by the
money crisis but to turn to God in ''active faith''. . . In
his presidential address, Dr Jensen sought to make
theological sense of the sharemarket crash and suggested
apocalyptic signs such as the economic crisis, global
warming and dust storms were pointers to the coming of Jesus
but were not in themselves indicative that end times were
nigh. He also posed the question of whether the losses were
God's punishment. ''It may not be our sins at all - it may
be that the Lord is simply seeking to test us.''

MS Magazine - For the first time in US
history women are about to become the majority of the
nation's paid workers. The recently released Shriver Report:
A Women's Nation Changes Everything is a comprehensive study
of this milestone. Today, women are the primary breadwinners
or co-breadwinners in 63% of American families.

Buzz Flash - Not many new books get a
69% discount before they are even released. In fact,
BuzzFlash -- which sells progressive books -- has never seen
such a slashed price for a book before it came out like the
$9.00 Amazon.com is charging for "Going Rogue." Yes, Sarah
Palin and "Going Rogue" -- not released until November 17 --
are going down cheap, at a price usually reserved for what
are called "remainder" books, the surplus stock of a book
that is dramatically discounted. Of course if you give it
away, you can have a popular product, so it's no surprise
that as of October 19, "Going Rogue" is number 4 on Amazon

American Chemical Society - Researchers
have established the conditions that foster formation of
potentially dangerous levels of a toxic substance in the
high-fructose corn syrup often fed to honey bees. Their
study, which appears in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of
Agricultural and Food Chemistry, could also help keep the
substance out of soft drinks and dozens of other human foods
that contain HFCS. When exposed to warm temperatures, HFCS
can form HMF and kill honeybees. Some researchers believe
that HMF may be a factor in Colony Collapse Disorder, a
mysterious disease that has killed at least one-third of the
honeybee population in the United States.

UCLA scientists
have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older
adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the
brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning.
The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help
stimulate and possibly improve brain function. . . As the
brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes
occur, including atrophy, reductions in cell activity, and
increases in deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles,
which can impact cognitive function.

The charter school
myth - The charter school movement has a very mixed record
in improving student achievement. A recent comprehensive
study from Stanford University's Center for Research on
Education Outcomes found that only 17 percent of charter
schools reported academic gains that were significantly
better than comparable traditional public schools, whereas
37 percent showed gains that were worse than their public
school counterparts, and 46 percent showed no significant
difference. Some charter schools do have a strong commitment
to community involvement, democratic governance, and open
access. But many others deploy exclusionary policies and
function as islands of privilege. - Rethinking Schools

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